by Sara DeHaven
“It’s just a difficult spell,” he growled.
“I’m sure it is,” she said carefully. “You’re operating from a depleted state, you know. You’re not over the knife wound, and your system is still reeling from the possession, not to mention all the efforts in battling the Keltoi. You’re not at your strongest right now, so of course this casting is harder than usual.”
His brows drew down in annoyance at her interruption. Clearly she wasn’t getting through to him. She came closer and sat down next to him the bed, and laid a hand on his shoulder, careful to rein in her Reader sense. His shoulder was stiff as a bundle of wire under her hand. “All I’m saying is that you need a little break. Your casting will go better then, you know it will.”
He looked mulish, but he didn’t pull away, so she ventured on. “You’re tied up in knots with all this sitting and focusing. Here, let me just work on your shoulders a little.” She pointed at the floor in front of the other bed. “Scoot over here. This will only take a minute.”
Somewhat to her surprise, he did as he was told without comment. She moved to sit behind him, settled her hands on his shoulders, and began with some gentle kneading to warm up the muscles. She quickly settled into a familiar routine. This was what she did for a living, and she enjoyed the chance to work at something she knew well after all her blundering around in Daniel’s world. Her sensitive hands quickly found the knots in his shoulders and the related knots in his mid-back. As she had assessed the first time she saw him, he was tight around his joints, one of those people who lived in their head a lot and held tension in their bodies, usually without realizing it. She felt his muscles softening under her expert ministrations, and a warm satisfaction welled up in her. He sighed several times, always a good sign.
When she judged him halfway to a puddle of bliss, she ordered him to lie down on the bed so she could get at his lower back, and he didn’t resist. She took a moment before starting again to try to shift back into professional mode. Having her hands on Daniel's body, feeling him respond to her was definitely becoming a turn on in a way it wasn't with her clients. She took a few deep breaths, which utterly failed to banish the sexual tension, and with a sigh, continued.
He kept his face turned away from her so she couldn’t read his expression, but she felt his body relaxing, lured into accepting care and nurturing. He was very quiet as a patient, no comments, no requests, no groans. But he soaked it up like a half dead plant soaks up a gentle rain after a long drought. Bree had a sense of these things, part related to being a Reader, part years of experience doing massage. He was gradually accepting it, gradually letting it sink in.
When she asked him to flip over onto his back, he did so, although she could see a modicum of tension move back into him. Ah, so he was more comfortable facing away from her. People did sometimes feel more vulnerable having their front half massaged, though she knew in this case, it was likely also because the sensuality of the experience was arousing to him as well. His kept his eyes closed, and she felt his energy draw further inside of him. She'd tried to keep her Reader sense in check, but it had opened up a bit unconsciously as she worked.
She shut it down again, and after a few minutes of working on his arms, she found herself pulled in by the interesting professional challenge of getting him to relax again. She slowed her movements, paying particular attention to the small muscles in his face, around his ears, in his jaw. But rather than decreasing, his tension increased. She realized belatedly that some kind of emotional release was probably building up for him. It happened with bodywork. The body held patterns of distress, and sometimes when you worked the parts of the body where the distress was located, the patient released the related emotion, sometimes with bouts of sobbing, sometimes just with quiet tears. “It’s okay,” she whispered, “let it out, whatever it is.”
He took a ragged breath, then another, then he reared up and twisted off of the bed, out from under her hands. In concern, Bree followed him to where he’d retreated by the window. She could see by the reflection in the glass that he had one hand over his face. She said tentatively, “Daniel, it’s no big deal. People sometimes have emotional reactions…”
“Don’t,” he interrupted.
“Really, don't worry about it…”
“Stop it!” he shouted, and whirled to face her, expression shockingly angry. She backed away a step involuntarily. In self defense, her Reader sense came up strongly. Without even touching him, she felt a roil anger, maybe even rage.
“Don’t manipulate me that way, don’t try to get in!” he raved, advancing on her. “What do you want, anyway?”
Fear and confusion collided, and she stuttered, “I don’t want anything!”
“Oh yes you do,” he insisted savagely. He reached out and gripped her arm hard enough to hurt her. She scanned him anxiously with her Demonsense, but there was no sign of taint or possession. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or even more frightened. “You just have to know, don’t you? You want to assess,” he bit out nastily.
“No, I…”
“What kind of shape is he in now? Let’s just see if he’s cracked yet, shall we?”
Her Reader sense was firing impressions at her as she backed away, tried to wrench her arm from his grip. The dark strain was right on the surface now, swelling up like a boil, leaking rage and violence. It scared her, and that pissed her off. “Get your God damned hands off me. You are not yourself right now.”
“Maybe this is the real me, have you ever thought of that?” he taunted. He released her arm, but moved closer, and in her haste to back away, she stumbled against one of the chairs and fell into it.
He put a hand on either arm and leaned over her, face close to hers. “Maybe you were right to be afraid of me in the first place,” he went on, voice softer but somehow scarier, eyes boring into hers. “I am a Demon Master and a Binder, after all.” Her rising anger and panic must have shown on her face, because he leaned closer. “How about I put you out of your misery? You won’t have to wonder any more if I really am a bad person, if I’m really corrupted beyond hope of redemption. I could just prove it to you, here and now. I could break my promise and Bind you. That ought to do it, don’t you think?”
Both his emotions and hers were bombarding her to the point where she couldn’t think, couldn’t even begin to frame a reply. Her Reader sense continued to seek and find patterns, and like a slap in the face, the image came to her of how she’d helped him recover himself when Gelsenim had possessed him. Forgiveness. Redemption. Those were key words for him. Something about the bodywork, something about letting himself be cared for had triggered this. The self-hatred that was so much a part of the demon triggered darkness was behind this. He couldn’t risk her caring for him, couldn’t risk letting her in. Given how deeply she could read him, if she then determined he had lost himself to Demon Master corruption and rejected him, he would know he truly was beyond redemption.
“I don’t believe you,” she told him in as confident a tone as she could muster. “You won’t do it. That isn’t you.”
There was a fierce light in his eyes that belied her assertion, and she felt a rush of magical energy building in the air around her. Oh God, what if she was wrong? He was going to bind her, and then what would he do to her? Her mind gibbered in fear even as she forced herself to say again, “That isn’t you.”
“I guess I’m about to prove you wrong,” he whispered, and closed his eyes.
Bree froze in terror, and then a wild intuition speared into her mind straight from her Reader sense, told her what to do. It was insane, but she kissed him before he could say the words. He jerked back in surprise, his eyes flying open. She put a hand on either side of his face, pulling him to her, and kissed him again, putting all her desperation, all her repressed physical desire into the kiss.
Daniel's magical energy flared hotter and the lamps rattled on their tables and the dinner dishes on the room service tray, and then he was kissing her back. He
fell to his knees in front of her, wound his fingers in her hair and kissed her harder, groaning low in his throat. The light bulb in the lamp next to them blew. Bree jumped in response and broke off the kiss. He pulled back and whispered, "I'm sorry. God, Bree, I'm so sorry."
And he was back. She could see it, the Daniel she knew was back.
"I don't know what just happened." As he spoke, he rested a hand on her knee, and it seemed to burn into her. A crazy flare of desire shot through her at his touch. For a moment, she seemed to see herself at a distance, watched herself actually lean toward Daniel, toward the man that had suffered some kind of fit and nearly bound her. And she kissed him again. Carefully, gently, he kissed her back, then retreated, repeating, "I'm sorry."
She knew she should try to get out of his reach while she had the chance. But as she looked at him, her Reader sense tallied up tells that told her again that the danger was past.
He must have seen some surrender in her face, because he cupped her cheek with his hand, and leaned in to kiss her again. Fool, she told herself. God, you are such a fool. You're going to trust your Reader sense now? When you're least likely to be accurate? But she couldn't stop responding. Her whole body swelled with need, with longing, but she fought it. Not like this. She wasn’t going to let it happen like this. She maneuvered her hands between them and pushed against his shoulders.
Daniel pulled back in response to the pressure, and she’d never seen such a naked look of desire on any man’s face. It completely undid her. Her heart lurched, and she fell into him, kissing him again. He urgently pulled her up to her feet and wrapped his arms around her, his kisses moving to her throat, her jaw. One of his hands pulled at her shirt to expose her shoulder and kissed her there as well. She should stop this, she knew she should stop this, but she wasn’t stopping it.
He backed her up around the chair and onto the bed by the window. He followed her onto to it, pulling her up until they could both lay full length upon it, pressed up against each other. One of her arms was trapped between them, and the other went around his back, her hand moving up to feel the hard muscles along his spine. He kissed her throat again, and she arched against him. His mouth moved its way back up to her lips, and his free hand down her side, then over to her breast, thumb moving across her erect nipple. She felt a tightening in her breasts, and a line of heat headed straight between her legs. He rolled over on top of her, and the weight of him against her was thrilling. She had both of her hands free now, and she framed his face with her hands, ran her thumbs over the wings of his brows, and kissed the hollow of his cheek, the hinge of his jaw, then moved back to his lips, softly. He allowed it, breath coming fast, then deepened the kiss again, causing her toes to curl.
Touching him like this, her Reader sense instinctively opened further, and his emotions were as clear to her as if she were living in his head. They were all of desire and desperate love, wiping out the despair, the self-hatred. And she felt him tapping into her feelings as well, his own Reader sense finally opened and engaged, and the combination was unlike anything she'd ever felt. His kisses became almost violent with desire, and whether this was all a bad idea, whether he was dangerous, or doomed to eventual insanity ceased to matter. She surrendered.
And then he rolled away from her, and clutched the wrist with his stone bracelet. “Oh fuck, not now,” he groaned, and spun off the bed, lurching to his feet. The air in front of him rippled with a surge of heat and mineral smell, and Gelsenim took shape in front of him, in his larger, demon shaped form, horns brushing the ceiling. “I believe you called me, Master,” he purred.
Chapter 23
It was the rising darkness in Daniel that had called Gelsenim, from when he'd nearly bound her, Bree realized in a flash as she scrambled off the bed in the hotel room. And likely the sexual energy as well. Somehow all that had broken through the hiding spell that prevented Daniel from accidently calling demons.
To her dismay, Daniel said nothing in response to the demon. It would be a mistake to let Gelsenim realize Daniel had called him inadvertently. He might very well try to possess Daniel again if he realized how easy those darker feelings would be to play on right now.
The demon stalked forward a few steps, then a flare of magical energy from Daniel signaled a warding, and Gelsenim ran into the invisible barrier. Daniel had thrown a ward up fast, but in his frazzled state, she didn’t see how he could hold it, or his control over the demon, for long.
“Why did you call me?” growled the demon.
Daniel swayed a little on his feet. Bree had to do something. She tried to think of some question to ask Gelsenim, to distract him. And finally, just when the silence was stretching out so long the demon had to notice, one appeared in her head. She took a step toward the demon and said, “Gelsenim, Daniel called you because I have a question. Tell me, in all the time of your existence, have you found alternative ways to feed? I mean alternatives to feeding on pain and destruction?”
“Why should I answer you?” the demon asked pettishly.
“Because I command it,” Daniel said gruffly. “And because we're trying to help you.”
Gelsenim shifted his gaze to Bree, and the horribly huge red erection was back. He thrust his hips at her and leered, “This one is in heat. If you take her now, take her by force, that will feed me.” Bree's mouth went dry and her knees started to shake.
“Take your human form!” Daniel commanded, and one hand rose in a fist, the focus for his Demon Master power. Relief flushed through Bree. Daniel's voice was steadier and he had that calm mask back in place.
Slowly, reluctantly it seemed, the demon’s form shifted and reformed to his usual human one, though this time, the dapper, self-possessed quality was gone. He looked more like a prematurely dissipated, hung over young roué. “She said alternative ways,” Daniel rasped, ignoring the demon’s earlier provocations. “You had some kind of co-existence with these Seldenai. Did that require them to take part in evil acts to feed you?”
Gelsenim’s eyes burned in his pale, ill looking face. He licked his lips, hesitating, and Daniel raised his other fist. “No, Master,” he answered, “that was not required. They were different from you, but it is required of you, of all humans we possess, or we persist in the hunger. I do not remember anything but the world of the Seldenai and this world. I know of no alternative.”
“Any news of Hunter?” Daniel asked shortly.
“None,” the demon replied.
“Then go!” Daniel ordered. A truculent frown twisted Gelsenim's lips. His form wavered, then stabilized. A line of sweat snaked down the side of Daniel's face, and he raised both fists and squeezed. "Depart!"
The demon's frown morphed into a smile. "Funny, I don't feel like going. This bash is just getting started." He took a few swaggering steps towards Bree. "What's wrong, my sweet? You were so deliciously hot just a moment ago. Did Daniel leave you unsatisfied? I think I'll possess him. We'll be able to take care of you then."
Terror didn't leave her, but rage roared up inside her, nearly drowning it out. "You know, I've just about had it with you. I am sick to death of your threats," she snarled. "I've had it with all you fucking demons." She raised her fists as well. "Gelsenim, I command you, depart!"
The demon misted out around the edges, and his expression flew from menace, to confusion, to dismay, then to satisfaction as his form solidified again. He gave her a nasty smile. "Well now, isn't that interesting. The wench is fighting back. This is going to be even more fun than I thought."
Oh shit, Bree thought just as Daniel snapped, "Oh no it's not. I command you to depart."
"I do believe you're a wee bit tired, Daniel. Or maybe you want me to stay." His orange eyes narrowed. "You do, don't you? You want me to possess you so you can take her, and keep taking her. You want to fuck her until she burns up, until there's nothing left of her, nothing to hurt you, to make you weak."
"Nice try," Daniel allowed, voice brittle, "but I'm not that tired." He slammed his fi
sts together. "Gelsenim, I command you! I am your master! Depart!" Gelsenim's form flared with light and heat. He morphed back to his demon form, teeth bared, eyes blazing, but then he faded entirely and vanished in a wash of steam.
Daniel swayed a moment, then sat down hard on the bed, hunched over with his arms wrapped protectively around his middle. “That was very, very close,” he whispered. After a long moment, he straightened a bit and looked up at her, face strained. “You have to get out of here. I’m not in control of myself, and I’m pouring so much into the finder spell that I’m not sure I can control Gelsenim any more either. He was inches from breaking away just now. It’s not safe for you here.”
Bree couldn't frame a reply. Her fury was evaporating, leaving behind jittery irritation and a sense of teetering on the brink of overwhelm.
When she didn't respond, he continued. “I don’t know if what’s wrong with me is permanent, but I can tell you it’s not a good sign that I inadvertently called Gelsenim. And it sure as hell's not a good sign that I almost bound you. It’s time for you to go.”
The confusion in her head cleared. “Not until we find Hunter.”
“There’s really no way you can help.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.” She walked over and stood in front of him, tried to get him to look at her. “I triggered a loss of control by doing body work on you, but I also helped you reel it back in. And that means the monitoring thing is working."
"Okay, fine, but..."
"And if I wasn't here, you would have kept pushing it. You're just as freaked out as I am about what they might be doing to Hunter." Tears welled up, and she impatiently wiped at them with the backs of her hands. "With your arrogance and your damned obsessive streak, you'd worked yourself to death. Literally."
His lips compressed, but he didn't deny it so she pushed on. “I’m getting enough of a feel for your patterns now that it doesn’t take a deep read to know when you're getting out of balance. That'll help keep things from getting too crazy again."
